Online tools Tips

Read these 7 Online tools Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Telecommuting tips and hundreds of other topics.

Online tools Tips
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PayPal has evolved and improved over the years and has become one of the most efficient and reliable tools for accepting payments online. With free setup and integration, as well as low transaction fees, you can imagine how readily it has been accepted as a superior payment processing system for online merchants and service providers. As a freelancer, it is essential that you provide your clients wth the ability to send you money quickly and efficiently, and it shouldn't cost you a lot of money to implement. PayPal allows you to accept online checks, credit cards, and PayPal balance transfers from your customers, which makes this the most flexible option for payment processing online.

Projux is a simple web-hosted application for tracking your projects and managing invoices. As a web-hosted application, Projux can be accessed anytime, from anywhere. Existing and new users alike can be fully up and running in the amount of time it takes to login. Nothing to Maintain: Upgrades, account administration, security, management and security are all included, so you can avoid the general headaches of system ownership and focus on your core business. The price is very reasonable at $15 per month.

WebEx's ease of use and huge list of top-notch tools make it the best pick for online meetings, both large and small. If you need to collaborate and meet with people without leaving your chair, WebEx is the place to set up camp. CNet looked at an early version of Meeting Center 5.0, the latest version of WebEx's Web conferencing software and service, and even though the company plans to roll out new features, this set of tools already impresses us. For example, you can now embed everything from 3D objects to streaming media within slides, control other PCs from afar, and schedule conferences on the fly using Microsoft Outlook.

BillingOrchard provides billing solutions through a simple, secure interface and priced for small businesses at $14.95 per month. BillingOrchard utilizes the familiar interface of a web site, along with the basic knowledge of accounting that any small business owner understands. That basic knowledge is: billing for services equals income. BillingOrchard will streamline your invoicing, allowing you, to focus on your work while generating constant cash flows. BillingOrchard can initiate the payment for any processor or gateway that allows form posts. Companies can also utilize their PayPal account to accept payments directly from BillingOrchard invoices. BillingOrchard is developed for use by small businesses, freelancers and contract workers. Traditional invoicing software is bulky, requiring plenty of data entry, some accounting knowledge, installed software and a great deal of time. BillingOrchard has been developed for ease of use and specifically caters to the needs of small businesses or individuals offering services. There is no software to download, install, update or purchase. Your company or service can be ready to manage your clients' accounts in less than 5 minutes, with no setup costs, and nothing to install. Your account is available anywhere with a browser and Internet connection. Also, your clients have access to view their invoices, pending hours and fees to be billed, along with their complete account history, all without time-consuming downloads and installations.

Got a new project? Get your team going quickly with this easy-to-use Web database. If you've ever worked for a large corporation, you may have enjoyed the benefits of sharing contact lists, budgets, calendars, project schedules, and e-mail threads with other workgroup members over Lotus Notes. But what if you work in a smaller company that can't afford an expensive, complicated collaborative database?

Now there's a new way for you and your team members to put your heads together: Intuit is hosting its QuickBase data manager for small enterprises on the Web.

Ever wonder how skyscrapers can be built in six months, or how consumer products are created seemingly in the blink of an eye? Rigorous project-management techniques, enabled by project-management software, contribute significantly to seeing many large-scale projects through to completion.

But it takes a lot of training--and a lot of patience--to reap the rewards of hard-core project-management software. And many projects simply don't require the complicated resource- and time-tracking tools found in such programs. Often all you need is to set out clear goals, identify necessary tasks, predict obstacles you're likely to encounter, and think your way around them. Yet for tracking small projects and mapping out larger ones, you may find Experience in Software's Project KickStart useful.

BillMyClients is a new company that specializes in allowing free agents, independent contractors and small businesses to easily and instantly integrate a professional billing system into their company's invoicing processes. For only $4.99 per month, you can perform all the invoicing tasks you need, in a simple web-based interface. You can create and track an invoice, accept checks and PayPal from your customers, use both electronic & snail mail delivery, track payments, track clients, send reminders, and it even has recurring invoicing capability. You can automatically calculate and add tax to any invoice. Shipping charges can be conveniently added to any invoice, and you can choose whether they're taxable or not. Store common client names and addresses and easily create an invoice with a click of the mouse. You can also view all of the invoices you've sent a given client and instantly create charts to see patterns. You can easily mark any invoice paid as you receive payment. You can view all of the changes to an invoice since its inception. Sending a reminder e-mail to past due clients is easy. Need instant payment for an invoice? The BillMyClients system is fully integrated with PayPal so that your clients can log in to view an invoice and then pay you immediately via PayPal. It's easy to personalize the invoices you send through BillMyClients.com. You can upload as many as ten logo files and then choose which logo you'd like to have placed on each invoice you create. This is a perfect solution for freelancers and homeworkers. Instead of buying expensive accounting software, you can use this web based system to solve your billing problems.

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